[1.12.x] Kerbal Atomics: fancy nuclear engines! (August 18, 2024)

[Nertea]

2 hours ago, Horcrux said:

I have a recurring bug where if I reactivate an engine's reactor the temperature will spike up to many times the level where it causes damage, causing the reactor to instantly be destroyed. Fiddling with the savegame it seems if I change the lastUpdateTime field in ModuleCoreHeat for the engine to be closer to the present the problem is fixed until the next firing.

Any ideas what could be causing this? Also, would there be any way to completely remove the meltdown mechanic with a patch (as IMO it doesn't make much sense for gameplay if all engines have 100% built-in heat rejection capacity anyway)?

Oh wow, another hideous stock heat mechanic to remove!

Can you provide me with some kind of reproduction steps, because that's not a clear enough report to help me.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Nertea

[Horcrux]

Sure, here's my modlist: https://pastebin.com/raw/YcKdWqgN

Everything was installed via CKAN

Reproduction:

1. Make new sandbox save
2. Build rocket with a Liberator engine and hydrogen tank and 'set orbit' cheat it into a high orbit so you can timewarp (I used 20,000,000 in the semi-major axis field)
3. Activate engine and burn for a few seconds
4. Deactivate reactor, cut throttle
5. Timewarp at max timewarp for a few days (I warped for 9 days)
6. Kill timewarp
7. Activate reactor and watch it damage itself and/or melt in less than a second (it melted in my test case but I've seen it take partial damage before)

Something I haven't realised also happens at this point:

The Reactor Power, Core Health and Core Life info fields all read "Core Destroyed/Complete Meltdown". I allowed the reactor to cool with propellant heat rejection. When I click the Start Reactor button the Reactor Power field reads "#LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor" (text is probably cut off, the box is too small) and the engine functions as if it's completely undamaged (full thrust).  Heading to the Space Centre and back to the craft retains this behaviour.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Horcrux
Missed some mods in first modlist

[Blazing Sun]

14 hours ago, Nertea said:

It shouldn't matter where that patch goes but canonically it should look like GameData/NearFutureElectricalNTRs/.

To generate power, the reactor should be on, at some power level equal to or greater than 1%, and the core must be hot. Importantly it must be a reactor that has power generation capabilities.

I discovered the problem. After doing a little playing around with the files, it seems that it does, in fact, matter where they go. After placing the NFE patch file straight into the GameData folder, the engines that should have produced power started doing so, when they hadn't with that folder inside my Extras folder. So that begs the question; should all of your 'Extras' files go straight into the GameData folder, instead of into their own Extras folder within the GameData folder?

[Nertea]

1 hour ago, Horcrux said:

Sure, here's my modlist: https://pastebin.com/raw/YcKdWqgN

Everything was installed via CKAN

Reproduction:

1. Make new sandbox save
2. Build rocket with a Liberator engine and hydrogen tank and 'set orbit' cheat it into a high orbit so you can timewarp (I used 20,000,000 in the semi-major axis field)
3. Activate engine and burn for a few seconds
4. Deactivate reactor, cut throttle
5. Timewarp at max timewarp for a few days (I warped for 9 days)
6. Kill timewarp
7. Activate reactor and watch it damage itself and/or melt in less than a second (it melted in my test case but I've seen it take partial damage before)

Something I haven't realised also happens at this point:

The Reactor Power, Core Health and Core Life info fields all read "Core Destroyed/Complete Meltdown". I allowed the reactor to cool with propellant heat rejection. When I click the Start Reactor button the Reactor Power field reads "#LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor" (text is probably cut off, the box is too small) and the engine functions as if it's completely undamaged (full thrust).  Heading to the Space Centre and back to the craft retains this behaviour.

Alright, I'll look into both of these tomorrow... The first one I think I know what's causing it, stock's idiotic heat catchup mechanics at fault again, the second I'll have to look into. 

3 minutes ago, Blazing Sun said:

I discovered the problem. After doing a little playing around with the files, it seems that it does, in fact, matter where they go. After placing the NFE patch file straight into the GameData folder, the engines that should have produced power started doing so, when they hadn't with that folder inside my Extras folder. So that begs the question; should all of your 'Extras' files go straight into the GameData folder, instead of into their own Extras folder within the GameData folder?

That's the idea, but it's very strange that this occurs. The fact that you are getting "half" of the effects is weird to me, and they're just MM patches.

Edited July 26, 2017 by Nertea

[bdole92]

Have you thought about adding a 0.625m Cryotank at some point? I really love this (and all the Near Future) mods, but it seems weird to me that the Eel atomic rocket motor doesn't have a corresponding size cryotank, and i am loathe to put LH in a non cryo tank. I'd really like to use the Eel for some high-thrust probe concepts, but having to use an H4 cryotank just ends up making the probe look weird and chunky. Not a huge deal though, and overall all your mods are super awesome!

[Blazing Sun]

8 hours ago, Nertea said:

That's the idea, but it's very strange that this occurs. The fact that you are getting "half" of the effects is weird to me, and they're just MM patches.

I don't know why it happens that way either. I do know though, that I had a similar issue some time ago with the Near Future mods; I had put them all into a folder I'd titled 'Near Future Tech', to cut down on clutter in my GameData folder, and for some reason, some parts appeared in my game, while others didn't. I took them out of that folder, and put them all back into GameData, and all the parts showed up fine after that.

[Wyzard]

7 minutes ago, Blazing Sun said:

I don't know why it happens that way either. I do know though, that I had a similar issue some time ago with the Near Future mods; I had put them all into a folder I'd titled 'Near Future Tech', to cut down on clutter in my GameData folder, and for some reason, some parts appeared in my game, while others didn't. I took them out of that folder, and put them all back into GameData, and all the parts showed up fine after that.

That'll happen with any part that uses the newer syntax for specifying its model: the .cfg file contains a full relative path from the GameData folder to the .mu file.  For example, NearFutureSpacecraft's orbital-engine-375.cfg includes the line:

model = NearFutureSpacecraft/Parts/Engine/orbital-engine/orbital-engine-375

If NearFutureSpacecraft isn't directly in GameData, that path won't exist, so the game will ignore the part because it can't load the model.

Also, :NEEDS criteria in ModuleManager patches match against top-level folder names, but not against subfolders.  Putting things into unexpected subfolders can make MM patches fail to apply.

[kgbeast]

I'm sort of stuck. I can't get the engines to work.
 

I transferred both files from extras folder because I wanted to use LF. But I have 0 thrust with LF and obviously, 0 prop requirements met with LH2

 

 

[Horcrux]

1 hour ago, kgbeast said:

I'm sort of stuck. I can't get the engines to work.
 

I transferred both files from extras folder because I wanted to use LF. But I have 0 thrust with LF and obviously, 0 prop requirements met with LH2

 

 

Looks like your reactors aren't running. Try hitting the Start Reactor button on your engines, waiting for them to get up to temp and then throttling up.

[MaverickSawyer]

13 hours ago, bdole92 said:

Have you thought about adding a 0.625m Cryotank at some point? I really love this (and all the Near Future) mods, but it seems weird to me that the Eel atomic rocket motor doesn't have a corresponding size cryotank, and i am loathe to put LH in a non cryo tank. I'd really like to use the Eel for some high-thrust probe concepts, but having to use an H4 cryotank just ends up making the probe look weird and chunky. Not a huge deal though, and overall all your mods are super awesome!

The mass fraction of such a tank would be horrible. Besides, you'd have so little LH2 in that tank, it'd be pointless.

[Nertea]

On 7/26/2017 at 9:36 AM, Horcrux said:

Sure, here's my modlist: https://pastebin.com/raw/YcKdWqgN

Everything was installed via CKAN

Reproduction:

1. Make new sandbox save
2. Build rocket with a Liberator engine and hydrogen tank and 'set orbit' cheat it into a high orbit so you can timewarp (I used 20,000,000 in the semi-major axis field)
3. Activate engine and burn for a few seconds
4. Deactivate reactor, cut throttle
5. Timewarp at max timewarp for a few days (I warped for 9 days)
6. Kill timewarp
7. Activate reactor and watch it damage itself and/or melt in less than a second (it melted in my test case but I've seen it take partial damage before)

Something I haven't realised also happens at this point:

The Reactor Power, Core Health and Core Life info fields all read "Core Destroyed/Complete Meltdown". I allowed the reactor to cool with propellant heat rejection. When I click the Start Reactor button the Reactor Power field reads "#LOC_NFElectrical_ModuleFissionReactor" (text is probably cut off, the box is too small) and the engine functions as if it's completely undamaged (full thrust).  Heading to the Space Centre and back to the craft retains this behaviour.

This is hideous. I spent some hours (3 in fact) attempting to track down the exact origin of this. 

It certainly has nothing to do with my code, so I'm going to be forced to create some kind of ugly, ugly hack to stop this. All updates delayed x days, where x >= 3 .

[Blackline]

27 minutes ago, Nertea said:

This is hideous. I spent some hours (3 in fact) attempting to track down the exact origin of this. 

It certainly has nothing to do with my code, so I'm going to be forced to create some kind of ugly, ugly hack to stop this. All updates delayed x days, where x >= 3 .

You mean for the stock heat catchup stuff? Good luck on that one, PR the fix to SQUAD when you are done :-)

[Nertea]

Some more hours later, I have a workaround. Hopefully the next release will include it.

[Nertea]

Kerbal Atomics 0.4.7

•  Fixed normals on all engines
• Some improvements to NFElectrical integration - make sure you get the lastest NFE
•  CryoTanks 0.4.6
  •  All tanks can now be cooled. Lifting tanks cast ~10% more to cool and have cooling disabled by default
  •  Repaired normals on tanks
  •  Fixed science costs of many tanks
  •  Refactored plugin to support multiple cryogenic fuels per tank
  • Updates to MFT Compatibility
• DynamicBatteryStorage 1.1.0
  • Refactored plugin for many improvements
  • Proper support for RealBattery

[Nertea]

This is a small but important update that fixes a bug with the FL-T800 fuel tank and possibly some mod tanks not loading properly when patched. This is because the game was written by monkeys.

Kerbal Atomics 0.4.8

•  CryoTanks 0.4.7
  • Fixed an issue where parts with '_' in their name would not be patched properly

[TheSaint]

3 hours ago, Nertea said:

This is because the game was written by monkeys.

Thank you for making me squirt coffee out of my nose.

[kgbeast]

Does the update contain the fix for melting reactors as well? I faced that problem as well.

[Nertea]

2 minutes ago, kgbeast said:

Does the update contain the fix for melting reactors as well? I faced that problem as well.

Potential fix was shipped in the last NFE version, which is where that code existed (it affects NFE reactors too).

[kgbeast]

Cheers. Thanks for the mods. Time to update all NF mods

[Malich]

Nevermind - figured it out. It was just a couple of engines from another mod, not the whole thing.

 

Edited August 5, 2017 by Malich

[Arthas_ImmortalDK]

nuclearEngine.cfg not work! Engine give trust The engine generates thrust when the reactor is switched off.  

[Nertea]

That is a very useless bug report.

[Stratickus]

@mikerl Did you ever finish the B9 version of this patch?

Or does anyone have a working MM patch that effectively does what mikerl was trying to do?

I do not use IFS, so this patch does not work properly for me. I messed around with it a bit, but was unsuccessful. I'd like to do what mikerl was attempting to do, for essentially the same reasons. 

My ideal preference would be a B9 part switcher (if this is possible) type to make the stock LV-N use either LH2 or LF, in order to more or less lock the decision to use one fuel over the other in the editor. As opposed to the mulitmode/bimodal RAPIER style, which allows you to change fuel in flight/mid mission. 

I attempted a MM patch using the RAPIER config as a template, but the patch did not work. I think it might be because the LV-N uses the older ModuleEngines and a multimode engine requires the newer ModuleEnginesFX but I'm not sure. Either way, my MM abilities are insufficient to achieve what I am trying to do, but I figured someone else has probably done this successfully.

Cheers,

[Cynor]

On 8/6/2017 at 9:38 AM, Stratickus said:

@mikerl Did you ever finish the B9 version of this patch?

Or does anyone have a working MM patch that effectively does what mikerl was trying to do?

I do not use IFS, so this patch does not work properly for me. I messed around with it a bit, but was unsuccessful. I'd like to do what mikerl was attempting to do, for essentially the same reasons. 

My ideal preference would be a B9 part switcher (if this is possible) type to make the stock LV-N use either LH2 or LF, in order to more or less lock the decision to use one fuel over the other in the editor. As opposed to the mulitmode/bimodal RAPIER style, which allows you to change fuel in flight/mid mission. 

I attempted a MM patch using the RAPIER config as a template, but the patch did not work. I think it might be because the LV-N uses the older ModuleEngines and a multimode engine requires the newer ModuleEnginesFX but I'm not sure. Either way, my MM abilities are insufficient to achieve what I am trying to do, but I figured someone else has probably done this successfully.

Cheers,

So I'm trying to figure out a way to make ONLY the LV-N use LF due to breaking some old designs, especially SSTOs, and so I'd also be interested in this.

I've actually started to dig around and trying to edit this, but am not having much luck. While I'm not a wiz by any stretch with MM and B9 Part Switch, but I imagine something could be cobbled together by looking at code for various parts like the Cryo Engines/Tanks to figure out how to add B9 to it possibly... I've found where the change to the LV-N happens is located, but I'm not 100% sure if it is as simple as copying over a few lines from the fuel tanks and stock LV-N cfg to make it work or not.

[B-STRK]

I really really really am sorry for bringing this up, Nertea, especially now that you're working on SSX after having passed through all the other mods in your family, and bringing up either a bug or an oversight would cause schedules to slip (and I may just incur everyone's wrath at this point). But with the latest update making all tanks coolable... well for USI spherical and cylindrical tanks it does bring up the "disable cooling/enable cooling" toggle. But once launched, no cooling effect, no power draw for any cooling enabled tanks, no toggle to switch it on or off... and with LH2 loaded, no boil-off despite cooling disabled in editor prior to launch (And for the cluster tanks, no enable/disable option at all). With stock tanks the effect is applied. I guess it might be unique to the USI tanks?

Really really really sorry for bringing this up and potentially causing schedules to slip please don't kill me and everyone else please don't kill me if the schedule slips as a result i wanna see improved station parts expansion too

5 hours ago, Cynor said:

So I'm trying to figure out a way to make ONLY the LV-N use LF due to breaking some old designs, especially SSTOs, and so I'd also be interested in this.

I've actually started to dig around and trying to edit this, but am not having much luck. While I'm not a wiz by any stretch with MM and B9 Part Switch, but I imagine something could be cobbled together by looking at code for various parts like the Cryo Engines/Tanks to figure out how to add B9 to it possibly... I've found where the change to the LV-N happens is located, but I'm not 100% sure if it is as simple as copying over a few lines from the fuel tanks and stock LV-N cfg to make it work or not.

If I'm interpreting your request right, which is that you don't mind the Nerva not having the LH2 option and just using LF for the rest of your game, you could just open up the Patches/NTR folder within KerbalAtomics and deleting the patch referring to Squad parts, which reverts the LV-N to stock behavior. Though if I got it wrong, please feel free to ignore this.